"tENT & Caleb Improv": I 1st met Caleb Gamble in the fall of 2005 when he moved to Pittsburgh to use it as a starting point for a flotilla of boats floating down the Ohio River to the Mississippi.  In early 2008 he proposed that we get together at my house & play a records-&-turntables free improvisational duet.  This seemed like a good time to do so because my record "Mechanically Repetitive / ReRecorded Records Record" had just been released.  On March 21, 2008 we did this but records & turntables didn't end up dominating as much as the other instruments in my (M)Usic Rm did.  I remember that at the time I wasn't very satisfied with our session, as is often the case with free improv, but I was looking forward to trying again.  We set a date for a week or so later for a 2nd session but Caleb didn't show.  When I phoned him about that he said something like "Well, you didn't.. You didn't.." but then couldn't finish the sentence because there wasn't anything that I hadn't done that he could act was a justification for not showing.  I was confused by this.  We've only played together twice since then in the ensuing 15 years.  Nonetheless, I've come to respect Caleb as a musician & a composer.  SO, when I was looking through my aRCHIVE for something neglected to put online I plucked this recording out of obscurity, glad to have a document of the 1st time we played together.  It was shot with a cheap student mini-dv camera, one of the worst mediums I've ever worked with.  Many or most of the mini-dvs in my aRCHIVE are defective, this was no exception.  Fortunately, I also had the sound on audio cassette, a vastly superior medium (despite ignorance to the contrary) so I was able to reconstruct this.  Given that the camcorder was on a tripod & that the lens wasn't wide-angle enough to get the full view in there's plenty of time where the 2 players barely show or don't show at all.  The original color was also quite dull.  I've tried to compensate for this in various ways.  Aside from some color adjustments & effects, I added stills from an exhibit at the Children's Museum by Ally Reeves at the beginning of 2008.  Ally had curated together various things for a display case: etta cetera's miniature book library; props from my movie "Teenagers from Inner Space" + a tiny TV screening the movie; etc.  I use photographs that I took of this display.  I also use photographs of my tattoo-plan in progress from the same time of my face as the face of a dynamite clock-radio.  The cover of my MR/MRRR record shows when I play that record (intercut with radio) at the end.  All in all, it's a better session than I remember it as being: I particularly like Caleb's glass marimba & electronics kit playing & my own piano playing.  I was probably at least partially disatisfied with it at the time because its sound is so 'classic' - i.e.: bordering on, e.g., an AMM session from ±35 years before.  I prefer for there to be innovations, at least innovations for me, every time I play.  That can be a hard standard to live up to. - January 4, 2023E.V. notes from tENTATIVELY, a cONVENIENCE 

plus-circle Add Review

comment

Reviews